A Pirate's Guide To Dabbing
by DraconicScribe
Summary: Self insert inserts into an alternate version of someone else's Self Insert with a unique Devil Fruit. Shenanigans ensue. Will our idiot survive traveling alongside Jeremiah Fucking Cross? Perhaps, perhaps. Permission to use This Bites! Universe and Characters has been given by The Cross-Brain. Please go read This Bites! if you haven't yet.


Chapter 1: Splashdown In Little Garden

BookDragon: Hey, Cyn,you know how we've been talking about One Piece and Isekai stuff a lot lately? I've been reading this really great One Piece Self-Insert fic! It's about this dude who get dropped into OP, gets a snarky transponder snail with a sound-based devil fruit, and proceeds to join the Straw Hats and cause utter Chaos! I'm at ...just before its version of Enies Lobby, and it's a pretty great story so far! It's got that standard OP mixture of high adventure, impressive fights, and clever humor, and I really enjoy the writing style!

SevenDeadlyCyns: Artemis. I love you, I really do, but we both know I don't like Isekai, and self inserts are a little...cringe. But hey, maybe i'll check it out if you're recommending it. maybe.

BookDragon: look, I know Slime Tensei wasn't something you enjoyed, but to be fair that recommendation was only half my fault. Check it out. I've been reading a lot of OP fics lately and very few compare.

SevenDeadlyCyns: On Gaelin's head be it if this rec sucks, Arty.

BookDragon: _Thinking emoji_

BookDragon: I know you're kidding, Cyn, but threaten my DND character again, and i'll run my campaign in One Piece with a blatant expy of you as antagonist or just literally you ;P

SevenDeadlyCyns: Do it,coward. I dare hey, if you're gonna do that,give me that cool Devil Fruit concept we came up with.

BookDragon:You mean the Dab-Dab? The one that's basically Soft and Wet from Jojolion but somewhat less broken?

SevenDeadlyCyns: Yeah, if the idea is literally Isekai'd Cynthia because you've apparently decided to sign your own death warrant at my hands, I better get something cool out of it.

BookDragon:since it operates by touch, you think the user would use Bagh Nahk as weapons? You know, those Indian claw-brass knuckle things Maybe with that curved knife, the Bichuwa, attached?

SeventDeadlyCyns:more like Bitch-You-Wa. But yeah, I just looked those things and they look both neat as fuck and practical for someone with that power. The ring finger and pinky slide into the little loops to hold it, and you could probably make a punch into a slash with those pretty easy. Especially if you had a knife attached to the bar. 10/10, would use. GOAT, Kino, Swag, and also Raw.

Discord: Never gonna give Badass Rude Outstanding Bro up, never gonna let Badass Rude Outstanding Bro down

SevenDeadlyCyns: Art is this some sort of prank? How did this weirdo get added to our private conversation?

BookDragon: NoNONONONO fuck this.

BROB: You fucking guessed it,bitch-they. Your idea intrigued me

SevenDeadlyCyns:Art what the fuck

BookDragon:This happened in the fic, this is the thing that Isekai'd the protagonist of the fic. FUCKING RUN

BROB:Eh, same concept, different omnipotent bastard. But hey, one of you is next, kid. I'm sure the results will be pretty amusing.

BookDragon: Well, you really shouldn't take Cynthia because she's married and stuff.

BROB:So you're volunteering?

SevenDeadlyCyns: wait a fucking second,I just started reading that fic, but I gather that this jerk is some sort of God or whatever and it's barging in here and threatening to take my friend? Fuck OFF,Big Asshole Random Bitch.

BookDragon: ugh. Yeah, im volunteering. Just leave my friends alone, ok?Same deal Cross got?

BROB: We'll see. Buut I wanna see how this plays out, so yeah,same deal. You were pretty dumb to have a bag ready with your little game console and some games and books in it but not have your phone in it too. Nice outfit, by the way. But seeing as you were cooperative...I'll give you a slightly better chance to live than my associate gave Cross.

BookDragon:?

BROB: Hehe, you'll see. Please hold, this may hurt a bit.

BookDragon:What may hurt a OHSONOFAMOTHERFUCKINGBITCH

BROB:What? If you're gonna be a manga character you need to be able to do face faults and those creepy things with your eyes. Good luck surviving your starting location.

BookDragon has left the conversation

SevenDeadlyCyns: fuck you. You divine son of a bitch.

BROB:So, looking for a co-DM?

SevenDeadlyCyns has left the conversation

BROB: This feels oddly familiar.

-o-

I woke up to a feeling that was soft but itchy beneath me,a heavy blanket covering me, and a ceiling made of...giant, mossy white pillars. A concerned, bearded face wearing a helmet peered down at me, the face...at least my entire height. BROBastard really did it, and that means that white stuff must be bone and that means this helmeted giant...is Dorry.

"Son of a bitch, Little Garden! NONONONONO." I cursed, punching the grou-giant pile of straw I was lying on.

"Gyagyagyagyagya! That's a funny response, human! But yes, you're on Little Garden. You doing okay, kid? You kinda just appeared from nowhere and dropped into the water while I was catching a Sea King for dinner to one up-Broggy. Had to give up on the bastard when I saw you drowning." Dorry cheerfully stated.

"Ugh, my everything hurts...wait, Mr Giant, where are my clothes and my bag?" I asked. That was my favorite outfit,and I could only hope Dorry's giant hands and the water hadn't trashed my things.

"Oh, those pretty things, and that backpack that got caught on a branch near the beach?Broggy is drying them by the fire, and your bag is right next to the straw you're on! But hey, fashion sure has changed in the past hundred years, Gyagyagya! Not very many men who weren't crossdressers wore a skirt back in my day." The giant cocked his head to the side as he laughed.

"Well, Mr Giant, that's because I'm not one! I'm uh...nonbinary. You know, not really a man or woman?" I squeaked nervously.

"Kind of like how some Okama are women who happen to have bits they don't want to have instead of crossdressers or whatever? I've heard of a few people like that, or who would go back and forth on which gender they were! So ...how should I refer to you and what's your name, little human?" Dorry seemed a bit confused.

"Uh, use they, them,and theirs where you'd use he, him, and his for a man or she, her, and hers for a man. My name's Artemis. Douglass Lee Artemis."

"Well, Artemis, it's nice to meet you! I'm Dorry The Blue Ogre,Greatest Warrior Of Elbaf!" He pointed over at a blond giant with a horned helmet and a terrifying large nose. " and the fella over there drying off your clothes is my best friend and eternal rival,Broggy the Red Ogre!"

"Gababababa, it's good to see the kid's awake! You hungry, Artemis? We've got dino meat, some tropical fruit, and some water we boiled clean to have enough to drink!" Broggy ambled over from the fire, my dry clothes in hand, and dropped them next to me, where I realized my bag had also been placed.

"Hell yeah! "I drooled at the aroma of the giant haunches on the fire before realizing something,a weird feeling on my forehead as what was most likely a tic mark swelled in reponse to my emotions. "Hey, I'm not a kid, I'm 23!" I smacked Dorry's titanic leg with my right palm while holding the blanket up with my other arm.

"Gyagyagyagyagaya, that's funny! You don't really look like a kid, but to put it in perspective, a giant isn't even an adult till they're at least twice your age! Plus you're a little scrawny, you aren't even two meters tall!" Dorry almost fell backwards in his mirth.

"Bah, just gimme some food and ill let it pass." I said, not wanting to explain that very few humans were taller than 7 feet where I came from.

"That's the spirit, kid! Gababa!" The blond giant barked, setting a giant haunch of dinosaur meat and a barrel of water down on a patch of cleared ground in front of me and putting down a polished wooden platter of various fruits the size of a coffee table next to it. I retreated farther into the shade of the giant skull, putting my clothes on out of the two's sight. Let's see. Boxers with muppets on them, black and green striped thigh high socks, brown vintage leather jacket,green cotton mini skirt that goes a little more than midway down my thighs, knee-high punk style combat boots, a Black T Shirt with a picture of a red pepper and the word "Spicy" on it in large white letters, and...ooh, my glasses didn't get crushed! That's good,get everything on.

That settled, my next order of business was to dig in. After a drink, I chomped down on some of the meat, and damn had Broggy been right in the story. It was sweet! I grabbed a nearby lychee and peeled it, not even noticing till I bit into it and tasted gasoline, glass, and hell that the lychee had been….bright fucking blue and that its spines looked spongy and swirly?GODSDAMNIT. The damn Devil Fruit slid down my throat right as I realized what it was. The two giants looked at me with concern as I hacked and coughed, beating my chest as the vile thing slid into my stomach.I felt very odd. Like something was warping and changing inside my body. It wasn't necessarily a feeling of sickness, but it clearly wasn't normal.

"EUUUGH! GACK! BLEH! That fruit tasted like rotten ass! Good meat, though."I yelled.

"GABABABABA, you look like you tasted hell! Lemme guess, unusually colored and had some sort of weird pattern?" Broggy asked, smirking down at me.

"Yeah." I muttered, digging into more meat to wipe the demonic taste from my tongue.

Dorry piped up. "Artemis, it seems you've eaten a Devil Fruit. You've got some neat new ability, like shapeshifting into an animal or controlling the wind or producing and manipulating razor-sharp string!"

Well, I already knew that, but I had to keep my cover as someone native to this world who would know of them but not be sure they existed. So, what did your average person in this world know about Devil Fruits? Oh, that's right, barely enough to identify most powers as "a devil fruit ability" when seeing them in action, as well as the standard restrictions considering weaksauce pirates like Bluejam had known about the whole Seastone thing.

"So I get some neat power, but can't swim and seastone also affects me like in the stories?" I asked, quirking my eyebrow.

The giant nodded. "Gyagyagya, pretty much!"

I scratched my head. I could feel this odd pulse going through my body, like how you can feel your blood pumping through you when you're exerting yourself physically, but more pleasant and less intense. I had this feeling that if I touched something, or I was touched, I could direct this weird pulse to act in some way.

It took me about two seconds to understand that the pulse must be my Devil Fruit power. Guess that rules out purely passive always on fruit, so it must be something that needs to be activated. That doesn't really rule out any of the three types, damn it.

"Huh. I can feel the power, let's give it a try on this blanket." I touched the blanket, directing the odd pulse into it, and **_Cloth Soft Thick Cotton Red Dyed Comfortable Giant-Made Slightly Dirty Blanket_** -what the hell? I pulsed more power into the blanket and**_ Red_** was suddenly part of the flow within me. The blanket faded to a dirty off- white, and I tried pushing the flow of power into the log below me, which **_Dry Tough Strong Wooden Rotting Pine Log_** turned crimson. The straw now gave the feeling of **_Dry Tough Strong Wooden Rotting Pine Red Log_** under the flow of my power. I shut off the flow and returned to eating.

After I shut the flow of power off, I noticed that I felt like I'd just ran between the two huge skeletons, and even given that I was fairly fit from the job I worked, that was pretty tiring for something so simple. I wondered if I could maintain that without touching it by concentrating or something, but I figured experimenting could wait till after the meal. The two giants seemed to agree, as the three of us didn't discuss my new power for the rest of the meal, and in lieu of that we chatted about the island and the history of the two giants.

"So you guys have been dueling for a century and can't remember why? I get that it's an honor thing, but that's kinda funny! Dababababa!" I giggled, not noticing _what had happened to my fucking laugh_ until after it left my mouth.

"Gyagyagya, I suppose it is ironic! But that's just how it has to be until one of us wins!" the brown-haired giant shrugged his shoulders as he spoke.

"We might keep this up another hundred years! But enough about us, what does your fruit do? Is it color manipulation or something else? Since the blanket turned white and the log turned red." The blond giant asked.

"I've been thinking, and I think it's some sort of touch- based concept manipulation. When I touch something with the fruit's power on, I get a sort of list of concepts that make up the idea of the thing I'm touching and I can pull it out of that thing and push it into something else I touch." I explained, frowning a little as I remembered exactly how it had happened.

"So you moved the concept of the color red from the blanket to the log. That's pretty neat! Gabababa!" Broggy chuckled, and Dorry joined in.

"Yeah, I need to experiment with it, but I can already tell using it takes a good amount of energy, I felt like I'd just ran from one mountain to the other when i did it!" Out of the corner of my eye,I noticed the blanket and log had reverted to their natural colors.

"Sure, and we'll be glad to help! But first you should check your stuff to make sure you've got everything!" Dorry pointed at my bag.

I nodded and went to check. Nintendo Switch, check. Games, series I'd been reading, check. My pajamas, hair ties, hairbrush, and comb, check. One change of clothes, check. Two Bagh Nahk with Bichuwa knives attached, che- I don't own any weapons, what the hell? Bastard hadn't even given me time to grab my phone off the charger, but weapons were ok? Asshole.

"Really, BROB? Really? I whispered, before a little letter labeled Read It,Dipshit caught my eye in the bottom of the bag.

I began reading it.

"Dear Idiot,

I have taken the liberty of providing you with that fruit because that's the only way you won't get killed by that Sand Reptile's organization before you even meet the Straw reason for the weapons. No fun if you just die like a little bitch without any kind of real struggle. As well, in the spirit of fairness I've made your glasses indestructible since I'm not sure they make your prescription around here. Enjoy and keep me entertained, kiddo. You know what happens if you don't.

Buckle Up,

BROB

Ps: I made your little game console have an infinite battery and limited internet access. Enjoy.

P.P.S: your fucking face when you ate that thing was priceless. I'm going to frame it and put in on my wall.

Needless to say, the letter went into the fire. On one hand, the BROB had helped me, but it was undoubtedly for the bastard's own selfish enjoyment rather than compassion or fairness. I was going to make that bastard pay one day, I swore.

-o-

And so began the training with Dorry and Broggy. The two giants taught me how to fight, both with my weapons and my body. They started me on smaller dinos like Bambiraptors, Compsognathus, and Protoceratops, rescuing me when things went badly. As the months passed, I moved up first to things like Polacanthus, Velociraptors, and other medium-threat if not neccesarily medium sized dinos. Do not fuck with velociraptors, the Death Chickens are very scary. Cute and fluffy, but very scary.

Needless to say, I was lucky to not pick up permanent injuries or more scars than I did. On that count,there was a scar across my eye that only hadn't destroyed the eye due to my glasses, and a large scar on my collarbone. The first came from underestimating a Compsognathus very early on, and the second from the claws of a Saber Toothed Tiger that had just barely managed to miss my throat before my blades slashed open its own. As my skills with my weapons and my body slowly improved and I lost some of my fat and put on muscle from a meat,fruit, and veggie heavy diet, my body slowly adjusted to the baseline strength of a One Piece human over the course of the first three months. On top of the training to fight, they put me through a physical and fruit power-based regimen that was as close to crippling as it could be without causing actual long-term damage.

Needless to say, I experimented with my devil fruit powers, working on their limits and how to incorporate them into my budding fighting style.

My limits seemed to be these: The more significant the concept is to the original object or person, the more energy costly it is to extract, the more significant the concept is overall the more taxing it is to keep it contained until I found a suitable place for it to go, and the less compatible with the concept the receiver is, the more costly it is to infuse. As for how long something stays that way, it turned out my concentration could forcibly hold a concept in place at an energy cost that seemed to depend on my willpower and the compatibility of the concept with what it was in. As well, compatibility , how often I'd infused that concept into that particular object, and my overall familiarity with the object or similar objects seemed to influence the power of the effect, the drain on my stamina, and how long the effect would last.

I also found that when it came to living beings, repeatedly imposing a compatible concept , especially one related to personality, tended to...shall we say, prompt the development of that concept? I couldn't necessarily directly make someone stronger or more friendly on a permanent basis, and I couldn't do crazy things like make bones harder than steel permanently. (The two giants kept requesting I try that on myself because they wanted to be able to spar with me without holding back as much.) What I did do, though? I accidentally made a very cuddly Ankylosaurus even more so, and became the parent to a young Quetzalcoatlus who really like aerial combat.

Look, the Devil Fruit powers were only involved in the first one, but i'll explain both anyways. So about 6 months into my training, I came across an Ankylosaur nest fairly close to the nesting grounds of the local Quetzalcoatlus. Like many I'd seen on the island, it was a grisly scene. There was blood everywhere, and the half-eaten corpses of two adult Ankylosauruses lay surrounded by several despondent juvenile ankylosaurs who appeared to be crying. I didn't know those little fellas could do that.

Unknown to the little guys, two Archaeornithomimus had snuck up on them, intending to snag some fresh meat to go with the slightly less fresh corpses. I'd encountered some of these brown-feathered goons before, and they were a fairly decent threat. Turns out, a lot of the theropods, the bird-like dinosaurs, _did_ have feathers, at least here in this world. This made some dinosaurs look a bit less intimidating, but didn't actually reduce their ability to murder your face. These two bird-mimics, cause that was the common name of the feather-bastards, were about to pounce on the poor babies when I made my presence known.

"Why don't you two jerks take on somebody your own size!" I yelled, raising my hands and flapping my fingers towards myself in a gesture that I was sure they understood meant _bring it on._ Look, in my defense, the little dinosaurs were cute,and I really didn't want them dying. Sure, they were half-grown and might have been able to handle it themselves, but I didn't want to let them get hurt. They'd probably never have done the same for me, law of the jungle and all that, but these were_ freakin' kids_. I had to do something.

"Cheep cheep squawk SCREE!" The Bird-Mimic on the left replied.

I could only assume that was some sort of insult or demand I leave, but in that moment I couldn't care less. Shifting my Bagh Nahk in my hands and casually tapping a nearby log with my right foot, I borrowed**_ Toughness _**and **_Strength _**from the wood, infusing the former into my skin and the latter into my muscles. Holding them there was a strain, but I'd practiced this enough that I could fight while applying concepts this simple to myself. I hadn't quite named this technique yet, but I figured I would later.

After six months of Hell only made possible via the ridiculous nutrition of Little Garden's food and the two giant's intimate understanding of how hard to push a trainee with Dorry and Brogy, I was no longer pathetically weak by this world's standards, and could probably handle someone like Iron-Fist Fullbody before he joined up with Hina. Unfortunately, that wasn't super impressive where I was standing, but it'd have to do. The two old bastards told me I was doing well, that in another year I'd be as physically tough and strong as your average physically fit Fishman was on land without my fruit's assistance, but my real improvements had been in my fighting style and my the concepts I was borrowing, I was a good deal closer to the Red Ogre and Blue Ogre's predictions. But hey, the knowledge that with more training from these two, I'd be a capable mook-mopper without my fruit and stronger with it? It kept me going.

"I don't speak your language! Fuck off or I get busy with these!" I said flashing my claw weapons and pointing the attached knives at the offender. I stared coldly at them, daring them to give me a reason. Jeez, keeping this up was a bit tiring. Even having trained with this particular combination a fair bit, I wouldn't be able to keep it up for too long yet, so I'd have to make this quick.

"Scree squawk cheep squawk?" The one on the right asked Lefty.

Lefty thought for a second, then clobbered the one on the right with one of its wing arms.

"Scree Scree CHEEP SCREE!" Righty yelled, pointing at Lefty with a claw, then to me, then back to Lefty.

Lefty rolled its eyes, but seemed to agree. Righty ran off, and Lefty followed, but not before somehow managing the _I've got my eyes on you_ gesture with one of its claws.

"That's right, go find somebody else to eat, feather-butts!" I yelled after them, before deactivating my devil fruit power and letting the concepts flow back on their own time. Judging by the amount of practice I'd done with this trick, it'd take at least a few minutes to trickle back to the wood, and the leftover vestiges of the concepts would give my training a boost for the next day due to just how often I'd done this. Really, it was better to train with them in there, but I was a little more focused on other things at the moment.

I shoved my weapons into a special belt sheath the two giants had helped me make, and took stock of the little dinosaurs in front of me. They all seemed healthy, shiny scales, bright eyes, their body spikes clean and their little mace tails smooth and shiny. They looked up from the corpses of their parents with a grateful expression I don't know how their facial structure managed, and slowly settled back next to them to resume their grieving. I sat with them for about half an hour before the little tykes left the bodies alone to go find food. All but one, that it, who rushed up to me.

Huh, I hadn't really noticed it before, but these ankylosaurs were pretty interesting to look at! Their spikes and back plates were all uniformly the same yellowish-brown keratinous color, like a horn or something, but each Ankylosaur's scales were a different color, like some sort of saurian rainbow! Neat! The armored plates of the little one rushing at me were identical to its siblings', but the rest of its body was bright purple! Somehow, I felt like this color scheme was familiar, but couldn't quite place it. I supposed that didn't matter, because while I'd been thinking it got within arm's reach of me.

The little Ankylosaur gently smacked my leg with its tail-mace and made a high pitched chirp. I looked it in the eyes, and it repeated the gesture, before nuzzling my head with its hand. I rubbed the little fella's head with my hands, and it let out a slow, low chirp of a little while of me petting the little guy and feeding it some archaic veggies I had in my bag, the little armored dino decided to follow me around. That day, whenever I looked behind me, there it was.

-o-

When checking his concepts, I'd found out that my dinosaur friend was in fact, a little dude. As he followed me around, I kept borrowing the **_Pack Bonding_** and _**Affectionate**_ concepts from local direwolves and applying them to him, because the little guy would not leave. I figured if I was stuck with him, I might as well have him help me train my Devil Fruit power. Problem was, as the little dude was already friendly and affectionate,_ the concepts were perfectly compatible._ After my powers wore off and the poor direwolves got their mojo back, the little Ankylosaur remained extremely friendly and overly clingy. Within a couple weeks, it was pretty clear he wasn't going to ever go off and be a normal Ankylosaur, so I decided to claim him as my little buddy, and that was that. In those two weeks, I'd yet to return to the two giants, so we decided to head back towards them. I'd go to Dorry's home, where I stayed, but the two giants had eaten and relaxed together a lot since my arrival, so it wasn't like I wouldn't see Broggy.

On the way, we came across something odd. A quetzalcoatlus egg, a bit discolored and slightly cracked compared to the other ones I'd seen,abandoned. I'd passed a nest about a mile back, and the parent pterosaurs hadn't even seemed distressed, so I figured there was no harm in grabbing it and continuing on. After a while, we reached the two giants, who seemed to be camping together instead of apart a lot more since I'd arrived. It was slightly odd, but not really a big deal, I figured.

Dorry greeted me first.

"Gyagyagya! Art, I see you've brought a friend!" He bellowed.

"Uh, yeah. Maybe another one if this egg hatches. Little guy hasn't left me alone for the past couple weeks." I shrugged noncommittally, patting the little Ankylosaur's head.

"Well, if he's going to stick around, give him a name! It isn't nice to leave a man without a name, Artemis! Gababababa!" Broggy stated.

It kind of disturbed me how the Red Ogre tended to follow up very serious statements with a laugh, but he wasn't wrong. I needed to come up with a name for the little dinosaur, I couldn't exactly call him Buddy or Little Dude Or Ankylosaurus all the time. Looking at his tail and color scheme, I got a devilish idea. It'd be both a reference to the little fellow's weapon of choice, and a franchise I was very fond of.

"Hey, little guy. How would you feel about being called Mace?" I asked, trying not to giggle at my own joke.

The little guy looked at his tail, then at me, then at his tail again, and then back to me, before thumping the little biological bludgeon on the end on the ground three times. This was his way of saying yes, which had taken us the entire first week to get down. No had been easier, and we were both still learning each other's body language, so it was a work in progress.

"Gyagyagyagyaga! It seems like he likes it! It's nice to meet you, Mace!" Dorry cheered.

In response, Mace rushed at Dorry and within seconds, Dorry had the half-grown Anklyosaur curled up in his palm like an over-sized kitten and was tickling him.

"Seems like we're keeping the little fellow around! GABABABABABA!" Broggy fell onto his giant-sized butt laughing.

"As if we could get rid of him, dababa!" I giggled, then winced.

I was still not used to the freaky fruit induced laugh,it seemed. Not even noticing my discomfort, the two giants continued to laugh and play with the little Ankylosaurus. They all seemed rather pleased about it, though I figured by Mace's slightly nervous expression that the island's native fauna had stories about The Huge Scary Pink Monkeys and how you shouldn't piss them off. That quickly faded as the two big softies plied him with fruit and affection, the little fellow's two favorite things.

After a few minutes of pleased saurian noises, Dorry set Mace down and he walked up to me, holding up his tail mace proudly. I curled my right hand into a fist, making sure that I wasn't wearing my weapons before sticking it out to the little guy. We moved our respective appendages a few inches backwards, and then brought them together into a fist bump we'd been practicing.

Mace squeaked in satisfaction, and followed me into the wood and bone shack I'd constructed over the past few months under the tutelage of the two giants. Which meant that the two had mostly done the building, and I'd gathered furniture and cookware and such from abandoned camps and the like left behind by people who'd visited Little Garden in the past before being eaten by the Island Eater. It was a cozy little place, but big enough for me and the growing Ankylosaurus.

Over the course of the next half hour, I set up a straw bed for the young ankylosaur. Well, more like i attempted to and he kept making a mess of it until I used the straw to expand my own. When I gave into the little Dinosaur's whims, he chirped happily and curled up in the straw bed. I settled down next to the little guy, and he scooted over to get as much of his saurian bulk underneath my outstretched arm as possible. Dinosaurs may be endothermic, but there was very little that could get between Mace and a cuddle.

-o-

Within a couple weeks, the Quetzalcoatlus egg hatched. The young pterosaur had reddish-brown skin and a bright red crest, so I named her Manfred, after a certain great fighter pilot from World War would unfortunately prove prophetic once she started flying, as she would always harass the chicks of other pterosaurs and other animals on the island for fights, aerial or otherwise. This was very amusing to everyone that was not Manfred or said baby prehistoric creatures, until the roughhousing went too far and my little avian daughter would have to run at top speed until she could take to the air herself. The little avian menace was often followed by an overexuberant Mace, having dragged the cuddly armored dinosaur along as backup muscle for her shenanigans.

More than once, I found myself rescuing Manfred and Mace from the clutches of pissed-off parents of all sorts, and there were instances where I nearly got killed protecting them. Even with the frequent fights adding on to my already intense training, I did my best to never take it out on either of them, since they were kids and I wasn't the type to use physical punishment or other such tactics in child-rearing. The fact that I made the two saurian troublemakers gather food or give more-than-normal help in regards to the little shack we called home when they misbehaved was...not always a very effective deterrent, because they enjoyed doing those things. Threats of confining them to the camp if they got themselves in too much trouble worked better, but were used mostly when they'd well and truly fucked up and left me nursing an injury that would take about as long as they were confined to heal.

As the months dragged on, Manfred and Mace grew older and began to train under local representatives of their species that Dorry and Broggy had shanghaied into service. My own training continued apace, getting stronger physically and gaining more skill with the fighting style the two giants had collaborated on teaching me.

I learned not only things like throwing a good punch or kick and the effective use of my weapons, but I had come up with some interesting integrations of my fruit power into my fighting style. I didn't have anywhere near the repertoires of people like Mr 5,Luffy, or anyone who'd had their fruit for a long time, but I did have several strategies and moves I could use depending on the scale of a fight. Granted, most of it was either based around helping me run away or being able to take hits, but I did have at least a couple moves designed for going after tough opponents.

About a year and a half after my initial arrival, I was about as physically strong as an average fishman, though not as tough. It wasn't necessarily my fault, but my bones and some of my organs simply couldn't adapt as quickly as my muscles could. They were stronger than when I'd come here, but extended fights or anything else that put a strain on my body was tougher than it would be for a native resident of this world with comparable strength, and my healing factor wasn't quite up to the standards of this world joints from spending most of my life ignoring a case of celiac disorder didn't help, but the entire lack of wheat in my diet and a diet of this world's food had helped that become less of an issue. Dorry and Broggy showed a lot of concern over all of this, but I told them I'd always been this way and that I'd get a doctor to take a look at it and recommend a solution.

I didn't tell them that with the treasure I'd found and prehistoric plants I was attempting to cultivate, I was sure I could finagle a way into affording treatment from that old hag Kureha, but that was a matter of not telling them things neither they or I should reasonably have any way of explain my presence here and knowledge of this world, I'd given them the same bullshit explanation of "Florida is a country on the Red Line with a summer island climate" that Cross had given the Straw Hats in the fanfic I'd read.

I really hoped I'd been Isekai'd into a canon-adjacent universe, but knowing how BROBs do their thing, it could have been anything. I _really_ hoped I hadn't landed in some unnecessarily dark reimagining of canon or a Luffy harem fic or a universe eerily similar to some of the quests I'd read or forums or image boards. I did not want to end up with my fate determined by dice rolls and the whim of a bunch of probably-horny One Piece fans, thanks. I figured I'd enjoy ending up in some neat AU or in a story about someone else's original character or self insert, but either of those was pretty unlikely. The real question, though, was if I'd end up a Straw Hat.

Well, first I'd have to survive Baroque Works. 3 and Goldenweek had arrived a few days prior with 5 and Valentine. I'd been gathering fruit for my lunch in a tree when I'd noticed Galdino setting up his shack, and I'd hightailed it out of there before he could notice me. I stuck close to camp for the next few days, taking Mace and Manfred with me wherever I went. Luckily for myself and the two giants, I'd managed to avoid being spotted by them directly, though I was sure they'd seen enough of my shack to know it was inhabited. Dorry and Broggy noticed I seemed to be on edge, so I explained that I'd seen strangers on the island. I hadn't told the two they were hostile, as I couldn't reasonably know, but I did tell them what I could.

"Yeah, there's a guy with glasses and black hair in the shape of a 3, I saw him make a house out of wax and when i tried to scratch it later, it was tough as steel!" I explained, winding up to say more.

"And the others you described? The dark-skinned gentleman with the sunglasses and trench coat, the blond woman with the weird hat, and the girl with the pink fedora and easel?"Broggy asked.

"Trenchcoat guy can apparently make bombs of some sort out of things like breath, snot and fingernails. I saw him kill some dinosaurs that were harassing him with a gun he loaded with breath bullets. Blondie..I think she can alter her weight? I saw her hover into the air with her parasol and then immediately drop onto a Sabertooth's skull feet first, killing it. As for the little girl? She didn't really do anything that I could see, but maybe she's got some weird crap with painting?"

"So three Devil Fruit users and a kid, eh? That's more guests than we've had in a decade, Gyagyagyagya!" Dorry pondered, then laughed.

"You think we should go greet them, Art? I'm sure they can handle themselves, but it'd be nice to have more company!" Broggy chimed in.

"Eh, let them make the first move. They haven't seen me, and I wouldn't want to chance them being hostile. If they approach us in a friendly way, we should go for it. Any other guests that arrive, though? Feel free to pal around as much as you like." I intoned, shrugging my shoulders.

"Gyagyagya, we'll trust you on this one! I do hope we meet some new people, though. They'll have to have interesting stories to tell, like those novels from your homeland you've been reading to us!" Dorry said, his huge face showing a massive smile.

"Gabababa, maybe they'll be brave warriors of the sea like us!" Broggy chimed in, flexing a massive bicep to underline his point.

"Yeah, I'm sure they will. Hey, I'm going to go fetch some food for Mace and Manfred, you two mind getting the rest set up?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Let's make a competition of it! Whoever brings back the tastiest food gets the week off from chopping firewood!" The brown-haired giant smirked as he challenged the rest of us.

"You're on!" Broggy and I cried.

The two giants headed out from Dorry's home, heading in different directions.

I briefly went into my hut to look into the mirror I'd salvaged, and took stock of myself and my two saurian companions. I was wearing a pair of patched jeans, a pink t-shirt with a scimitar and pistol crossed on the chest and black text reading "BUCCANEER" over it, my well loved and much-patched leather jacket with trophies from a few of the creatures I'd beaten sewed into it (I'd had to become fairly good at sewing to keep my clothes intact), and my boots, which really needed to be replaced at this point. My wavy brown hair had reached waist-length by this point, so unless I was sleeping I always kept it up in a ponytail. I had the backpack I'd brought with me, a black canvas affair with a bunch of dice and the words "Bag Of Holding" embroidered onto the top flap, which was secured by straps. It even had pockets and a drawstring for closing the bag with! I'd lost most of my excess weight, developed a tan,and was somewhat more muscular, but you wouldn't really notice either of these things unless I wasn't wearing a shirt or wearing short sleeves.I didn't exactly have a six-pack or a flat stomach, but living on this island had made me noticeably fitter. Aside from that, my Bagh Nahk were on my belt ready to be put on at a moment's notice, and the facial scar I'd picked up was still pretty obvious, though it was just pale skin and scar tissue by now.

As for the dinos, Mace still wasn't fully grown, at around 14 feet long, a hip height of nearly 4 feet and 2.5 tons of weight compared to the full growth he'd later reach. His armored plates had come in quite nicely, and his tail mace was a fairly heavy weapon, despite him not quite being an adult yet. He was quite intimidating if you didn't know him, and couldn't read the very friendly look on his scaly face. He had two large wicker basket strapped to a saddle on his back, which we were heading out to fill.

Manfred, for her part, was mostly grown, about 7 feet at the shoulder compared to her eventual 10, and about 2/3rds of her eventual 36 foot wingspan grown in. Her neck was long, thick and serpentine, which was necessary for her to be able to hunt the smaller creatures that she ate. Her skin had become overall redder, though not quite the shade of her crest, and she struck fear into her prey with her long, sharp beak and sharper vision. By all appearances, she was a fierce creature, and she was, though she had a soft side when it came to Mace, myself, and the two giants.

Were we ready for this? I pondered as we went to gather some fruit and prehistoric veggies. The two giants would have the meat for the four of us who enjoyed it handled, but Mace was stuck eating things that were decidedly not meat. There was also the fact we'd have to feed the Straw Hats, which was an intimidating prospect. How was I going to keep Dorry from drinking the explosive beer and ticking off Luffy at the same time? This was going to be a pain.

Within an hour, I was back at Dorry's camp, washing fruits and vegetables the two dinosaurs had helped me gather. I was fully immersed in my work, humming softly to myself, so at first I payed only cursory attention to the Straw Hats as they filtered into the camp and the two giants introduced me to everyone. It was nice to have someone else handle the whole spiel about my gender for once, but beyond that and some polite hellos, I wasn't paying attention. I was paying a lot more attention to the legendary crew themselves than what was being said, and so I studied them.

The cheerful young man with black hair underneath a straw hat and who'd have been considered Latino back in my world, Monkey D. Luffy. The orange-haired violent navigator, Nami. The long-nosed young man with darker skin than the rest of his friend and some frankly oversized overalls, Usopp. The bluenette with a ponytail who seemed more than a little nervous, Nefertari Vivi. Zoro and Sanji weren't there yet, but I figured they'd be along eventually.

I'd been tuning the conversation out a bit as I prepared the fruit salad, but the words I heard next snapped me out of it. The Baby Transponder snail sitting on Nami's wrist spoke up in a voice that was definitely not that of any of the canon strawhats.

_"I'd say you have your hands full, but considering how I doubt even you can punch out a giant? I'll just leave you with my sympathies."_ The unfamiliar voice said, snickering.

"Screw you, Cross!" Nami yelled. Had I heard that right? Was this a prank? The presence of the two baby transponder snails in the camp confirmed it, but what happened next put me beyond a shadow of a doubt.

After a second, Luffy chimed in. "Hey Cross, sure you don't want to meet up with us? Dorry and Broggy are pretty awesome,and there's another person here too!"

The snail chuckled, and Cross replied. _"No thanks, Luffy, this is enough for me. I'm happier out here. There's a whole wide island out here, and I want to see as much as I can!"_

Jeremiah Cross, someone's self insert from a goddamn fanfiction , was on the other end of that snail. I'd fucking Isekai'd into a version of This Bites! Welp, I'd say goodbye to my sanity, but it may as well have already been gone. Might as well embrace the chaos. Before I could ponder exactly how fucked I was, Dorry chimed in.

"Still, human," Dorry said with a somewhat concerned expression. "I would recommend you exercise some caution. While Broggy and I are too big to be in any kind of danger from the local fauna, the same cannot be said of you humans. Even Artemis plays it safe around here, and they're wielding the power of a Devil Fruit."

"Yeah, keep an eye could run into anything in a place like this!" I said, trying to warn the young man without revealing that I knew just who he was about to run into.

_"Ah, don't worry about it,"_ He said confidently, as if verbally waving off our warnings._ "I've got Soundbite with me, and he's got practice warding off dangerous animals. Plus, if I get close to anything really bad, he'll warn me about-OW!"_ The snail winced, as if pain had been inflicted on the person on the other end.

_"That bad, huh?"_ He asked.

"What is it?" Usopp chimed in.

_"Something in a cave's got Soundbite spooked."_ was the terse reply.

"A cave, huh?" Brogy mused contemplatively. "Sounds like your snail has good ears, human. There's a species of small dinosaurs on the island that like to use caves as nests. They're nuisances to us, but to you, I imagine they'd be quite it could be something else, Artemis did say we had some guests on the island."

_"Right!"_ he hissed. _"Well, I'm just going to go... anywhere but here. I'd prefer to avoid meeting small, hungry dinosaurs and strange guests."_

"I'd be offended by that, but I'm a strange resident instead of a strange guest. Hey, Cross? Keep an eye out." I said, beads of sweat dripping down my forehead.

"Yeah, I'm just glad you're trying to be safe." Nami groused.

The snail rolled its eyes, and spoke in a teasing tone "_Ah c'mon. I can get my crewmate worrying, but a complete stranger? How much trouble do you think I could get in?"_

"More than you can imagine." Nami growled.

I followed up with "More than you'd expect." I was about to go a little bit more obvious with my warnings, when the snail piped up again.

_"Ah c'mon, I'm not that ba-ah."_ The snail paused, before continuing to speak._"On second thought... you two might have a point."_


End file.
